Ben Tre moves up on the CPI scale

Posted: Tue, 03/05/2012 - 08:52

On April 22, 2008, Mr Do Minh Duc, Director of the Department of Planning and Investment of Ben Tre province (DPI) hosted a workshop for Ben Tre's 2007 Provincial Competitive Index (PCI) analysis. At the workshop, the 2007 PCI was presented the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) showing Ben Tre moving up 12 positions on the PCI scale compared to 2006, ranking 14th over 64 provinces and cities of the country.

The PCI scale this year has shown that Ben Tre is also ranked 6th of the top 10 good perfroming provinces (there are 6 Mekong Delta provinces present in this group, including An Giang, Ben Tre, Dong Thap, Can Tho, Soc Trang and Tien Giang).

8 out of Ben Tre's 10 classification items were put in high-marked items that had had good improvement over the year. They included legal institution, access to land, transparency, time spent to get into the market, labour training, unofficial costs, and dynamicity. The policy for development of private business was graded at medium rank, and the preferences for State-owned enterprises was ranked low.

In recent years, Ben Tre province has been striving greatly in administrative formalities reform. One concrete result from this programme is that the time for an investment project to be licenced has been reduced to below that regulated by the law. Still, bank loan to investment enterprises had to comply strictly to regulations for collateral and debt recovery.

However, the fact that many private commercial banks open branches and outlets in Ben Tre has told greatly about the new high competitiveness of the province's banking market. It says that businesses are now able to choose among a host of banks to borrow. And for their part, banks have to do everything they can to draw corporate clients, including good interest rate policies, excellent services, etc.

In the past year, Ben Tre province achieved satisfactory results in socio-economic development thanks mostly to the fact that its investment and business environment had been improved remarkably through issuing investment preferential policies and intensifying the support for corporate operations.

In the coming time, Ben Tre will continue to improve its investment and business environment, especially the medium and low ranking PCI items.